What lay hidden under the snow comes to light at last. One thing that was hidden for a long time, more than just a winter, is the brother of my mum. A couple of weeks ago they call me, my parents, and they say, a bit like when they once told me when I was 6 years that I would get a brother, that actually my mum just got a brother. I took some time to get it into my head. Can you repeat that? You just got a what? A little brother? But my grandmum just turned 80 years old!

But it’s true! Thanks to my new cousins (vink vink om ni läser detta! ) my grandmother got a letter telling that her son, Patrik (med eller utan c?), that she didn’t see or heard of since he was born, is having a good life, a wife and three daughters. She felt a bit scared that we would be angry at her now when her secret got out, poor mormor, but no, why would we, it’s just great this story!   I’m impressed that she managed to hide her pregnancy for mum and her sister, 9 and 11 years old.

My parents met the new brother and his family this weekend, together with mormor and the sister of my mother. I got some photos, but I would have loved to be there with them, hope there will be an opportunity to go and see them this summer.

Some spring photos from (soon to be) our new house (final signature planned for mid april):

The house dates from 1840, has 110m2 living area and has a land of 5000m2 around (about half in front, half behind). A bit tricky to get the price to fit the budget, but we’ll try to give an offer quite a lot under the given price.

Yesterday we were there for a second visit, took photos, messurements and looked more into details. News from this second visit is: heating system is fairly new and could possibly be kept as is, as well as the water heater (chaudiere). They’re driven by gas and there is a gas ’sisterne’ outside.

I’ll show you the land. Lets start below the house. Here we have three wide bands of grass and trees.

Wine grapes And behind them you see a fig tree (figuier, fikonträd), and behind there a chicken house!

Then we’ll walk up behind the house:

All up to the big tree belongs to the property.

This is the house from behind. The view we see we will also get from infront of the house as soon as we’ve cut them a bit.

Next to the house, direction south, there is this terrasse with roof, perfect as dining place 7 months a year.

So, to the inside. There were no plans of the house so with our own meassurements we made up those plans.

[plans]

The main entrance leads directly into the kitchen.

This is the kitchen today.

Living room and dining area. The door you see is on the south side of the house.

Floors in kitchen and living room. I find them not very beautiful, but they have their charm, for sure. Even if it will hurt to destroy something old (probably from the twenties), I think we’ll change them to something more ‘calm’ but still keeping the atmosphere - not too modern.

The only toilet in the house is just above the stairs, and is 110*110cm. Never seen such a small room. But it works.

What you see here is what would become our dressing and bathroom. It’s in the part of the house to the left, added later. The crack in the walls, which you can also see on the outside is a bit worrying, but the most probable is that it’s been there for a long long time, and if the house could fall from it, it would already have happened.

Same crack on the outside, both in front and behind the house.
There are three other small rooms, but we might redo one into a shower room.
 

Next to the house there is a garage that could possibly (but illegally) be remade into living space, probably a living room with big windows where the garage door is.

The heater and hot water tank can be seen in the corner. On the back wall we can see the bare stones. If we’re lucky more walls in the house are made with this stone and we could make it visible on some walls.

View on the house on it’s hill, taken from the closest road. You hardly see it, but it’s there, a little bit below the middle of the photo.

Now, help us to hold all fingers and toes that we this dream comes true! And if you have experience yourself on old houses like this or renovation in general, don’t hesitate to share it with us!

Just after the wine guide “Guide Hachette” came out in the shops Anthony read it in detail, together with another guide “Gault Millau” and some older versions of guides, and then composed a schedule for our yearly wine trip.

This year the selected regions were Jura and Alsace. We met up Philippe and Gaelle in the train station in Lyon where they arrived with the train from Paris, Friday noon, and then we warmed up with a first wine producer in the afternoon. In the evening Elodie, a friend living in Geneve, met up to spend the weekend in Jura with us.

Jura is a beautiful region, we didn’t know it before so it was a true pleasure to discover it together.

The previous years I have enjoyed our wine trips (Bourgogne, Bourgogne, Bourdeaux), but it’s first now that I really can start to enjoy and understand more the wines. So, what’s special then for the wines of Jura. First of all, they have a specific variety of grapes called Savagnin. With these raisins they make white dry wine a with smell of nuts (valnöt). They have several different ways to make the wine, giving different kinds of wine.

The most spectacular preparation is for the ‘Vin Jaune’, the yellow wine, which is kept in wooden barrels for 6 years and 3 months and they don’t add any wine to compensate for the evaporation. When the wine is ready to drink it rests 62% of the original volume (we know that because they chose the size of the bottle to represent what’s left of one liter). What keeps the wine from oxidation is a kind of mushroom which forms a layer on top, this also gives the yellow wine a very special taste and smell. Not everyone likes it. We found it all five quite difficult to like in the beginning, but then after some days one after the other started to get used to it and some started to even like it a lot.

They also do ‘vin de paille’: ‘Straw Wine’ where the grapes are dried to concentrate the juice. The result is a very sweet wine. miam miam.

For the red wines of Jura the specific types are Pulsar and Trosseau. Light wines in both color and taste. I didn’t find them exceptional, but it’s always interesting to try new things.

The two first nights we stayed in a bed&breakfast in a farm. An enormous building, built up from scratch, new and fresh inside. The old house had burnt down, but they kept a bit the style with the big roof, sometimes nearly bigger than the house itself. We got a room with a mezzanine, and above the bed it’s 7 meters up to the ceiling. Saturday evening we ate at the farm with the owners and some other guests. They had prepared a famous dish called ‘poulet au vin jaune’, it’s chicken cooked with the yellow wine.

Sunday we had a day off, moving from Jura to Alsace. The weatherforcast for each day was showing bad weather coming up, but even if there was some drops of rain some days, all days turned out to be really nice and we could even have a picnic in the grass.

Specialities from Jura. Of course we opened a bottle of wine as well!

Vacation!

We moved on to Alsace and spent the following three nights in a bed&breakfast close to Kaysersberg. The nights there was a engagement present from Anthonys parents and a more charming house is hard to find. Decorated to perfection.

Relaxing in front of the house with view on the hills and forests.

I rarley slept in a room as beautiful as this one. The sheets were ‘Lin du Voges’ and so
soft that I didn’t want to leave the bed in the morning.

Even common room and kitchen followed the same standard. The paintings were real, and
the table decoration were different each of the three mornings we ate there.

After the restaurants in the evenings we stopped on the way home in the forest or on a
hill to feel the nature and the moonlight.

Have a look at those pictures taken in almost complete darkness. Amazing that the camera rebuilt the green of the grass and the blue in the sky!

One afternoon Sophie made us company, a childhood friend of Anthony and Vincent, her boyfriend.

We visited 7 wine producers in Alsace. I think I’ll skip the details here, I can just say that there was so much good wine there! Two of the producers who will stay most in my memory was Mr Pierre Frick, using biodynamism, planning the harvest after the moon, and using no additions to the wine other than a very restricted quantity of sulfur for the white wine. It’s a bit in to produce ecological wine, but this man did not follow any trends, he’s been doing it for 15 years.

The second place I’ll remember is the one on the photo above. The owner who also made the degustation for us opened bottels for us to taste for nearly 200 euros! They will use them also for other groups, but it’s a good thing to be there when the bottle is just opened. At some places we tasted wine opened four days ago, and it changes it’s smell and taste a lot in that time. Anthony said that the wines he tasted in this place were some of the best wines he’s ever tasted in his life!

I’ll finish off my story with some pictures with a true alsacian feeling:

What is better than having 10 days of vacation in front of you, staying at a horse farm (knowing how much I love horses) and climbing in the wild and beautiful nature?

We started our vacation in Corte, a small village in the middle of Corsica. From Nice we took the boat with the car, 6 hours to reach Bastia. And then about an hour to Corte.

The first morning was nice, the discovery of the mountains and the nature, and with horses everywhere.

Just next to Corte lays ‘la vallee de la Restonica’, where we climbed the first three days.

Two new things found: mountain of granit and wild cyklamen.

First day I was still having a bit of a cold and wasn’t in the best climbing shape, we stayed on a normal climbing site and felt for the first time this new kind of rock.

After the climbing we went back to the farm and went on a horse ride. And I forgot to bring my camera! 45 min up on a mountain, beautiful view, and 45 min down. Wonderful horses, arabs, as made for the difficult terrain. Then we ate at the place we’re staying. It’s a special atmosphere among people staying at bed&breakfast, everyone talks and tells stories, not as in a resturant where it’s almost taboo to talk to the neighbour. It surprised us this first evening, when we came and sat down at the long table and 15 people asked us what we had done during the day, where we came from and where we were going.
The second day we went to climb a summit called Sorbello, a 180 meter long route, divided in 4 parts, most of them 6a. But first we had to get there, this is what blocked our way:

First goats on the road, in corsica they let all animals just go free everywhere: goats, pigs, cows, dogs, and even horses in one place. Then, everytime we wanted to find the beginning of a route, it took us 45 minutes of searching for the path. Anthony had shorts and his legs was full of scratches after. The bushes are nice to look at with flowers and all, but there are lots of evil things with torns in there as well.

This rock has so funny shapes! They were wonderful to climb in. And often they made perfect wholes for the ‘breakpoints’.

Off towards heaven. Here I’m climbing the last section, it’s a 6a.

This is how I look just before I go climbing in first, full with roaps, and quickdraws, and a smile which says ‘look at me, I’m so good and I’ll climb in first’. Or something like that. Always as nice to be up on the top and make the mandatory summit photo. In my photos page there are some more photos of the climbing itself if you want to see. I’ll only write about a selection.

The third day we went to a normal climbing site (not a mountain to reach the summit). I was in a good mood and managed to climb a beautiful 6a+ in first, and a 6b in second.

Anthony climbed the 6b in first on the second try.

Bavella

We said good bye to the horses, Corte and Restoinica and drove 2 hours down to Bavella, the mountains in the south.

Found on the way:

Beautiful views. Pigs on the road. Anthony went and touched them, me I was a bit sceptic.

The climbing of the day was ended after the first step because it started to rain. To bad. On the photos you see the 6a+ we climbed. It’s flat, more flat even than you can see. And nothing to hold on to. You put your hands flat on the rock and hope the degree of leaning of the wall is big enough for you to not slide down. Very particular style. And then just after you have those big ‘tafoni’, as the formations are called in the corsica language. Where you can climb roofs without problems, the wholes for hands and feet are big and confortable.
We stayed in a small village called Quenza, in a, from the outside quite ugly bed&breakfast, and from the inside, one of the most beautifully decorated houses I’ve been in.

Our room with mezzanine and Vietnam style.

Here are the rooms for apperitif and dinner.

A bit left of the middle of the photo you see a ’smooth’ mountain. It’s a very famous route going there, called ‘the back of the elephant’. It’s mentioned in the book of over the most beautiful routes of the world, one of the easiest routes in that book, but still a very, very hard one. And of course the dream of Anthony to climb this one with me…

But first we had to warm up.

The meteo announced the worst weather of all this week for the second day in Bavella. Sun in the morning but thunder and rain in the afternoon. I think initially we had planned to do normal climbing but since it’s much more beautiful to climb up to a top we decided to try a long route, but short to be long, only 130m. It should be only 30 min walk to get there, but in fact the guide counted the walk from a refuge, to which Anthony calculated with the map that it should be another 30 min, so I was ok to try it thinking that it was ok to be a bit wet on the return walk, and if it started raining during the climb we would just go down like yesterday.

Well, it turned out that what was quite short on the map in reality was very steep paths - it was a 2 hour walk just to get to the refuge. The path was in the forest, so beautiful and calm. The sun shining and the temperature perfect for walking. We were following the very famous path named GR20, so no risk to take the wrong path, just to follow the small red and white marks.

In our plan was also that there would be a gardien in the refuge and that we would stop by there to eat lunch on the way back but it’s still to early in the season and the gardien had not yet moved out.

When beginning to climb we could see the clouds over Bavella, but on top of us only blue sky and a warm sun. After the first lenght of four we saw that the clouds had grown bigger, we felt some drops, but we thought still that they would stay over there. In the third lenght it started to rain, quite a lot even when it was my turn to climb, and we even heard the thunder far away. The relai was not too good to use for going down on so we decided to have a look at the last lenght. First it we had to walk 20 meters to find the start of it, it stopped raining but everything was wet. It’s very slippery to climb when wet…

Luckily the last lenght was climbing using a crack, so Anthony could put ‘friends’ (his own points) in several places between the real points. It was a 6a and quite hard even in dry weather. Next to the crack was simply a flat wall, leaning, but without anything for the hands. Anthony managed at last to reach the summit, and I managed on my turn to climb completely without using the rope or points, I was proud when at the top, as can be seen on the picture above, it’s when I’m just coming up on the top.
The name of the route has a connection to a woman that suicided there a long time ago, the name is ‘La fille qui m’accompagne’, meaning approximately ‘the girl who keeps me company’. It’s said that when climbing you can still hear the woman cry. On the summit we heard something, I thought first it was someone in the forest on the bottom who had opened a tap with water, but it was strange that it was moving from one place to another. Anthony were thinking of the woman. Then we understood that it was the thunder making these sounds, it’s like when you stand over high voltage ‘ledningar’. I wanted to go down. Quick. We found the good place to go down and in two times we reached the ground. It started to rain again. We went to get our shoes and bags, good to put the feet in real and dry shoes. And then it was just to start walking, with 2,5 hours of rain and mostly uphill infront of us.

In the middle of the bad luck with the weather we got to see those salamanders, only coming out in wet weather. Crazy how these ‘wet’ animals can live in a forest normally so dry all summer.

Two other wet animals. Anthony didn’t even have a rain coat and was wet all through.
We had found one package of cookies in anthonys sack, he gave me 3 and ate 1 himself just before starting climbing. When starting to walk back at 4pm we were already so hungry, and when reaching the car almost dead. Anthony was weat all through, but me I had my jacket so only the legs and feet wet.

Here is the view of ‘our’ mountain taken on the way back when the sun finally won over the rain.
I think we’re the first and only guests in the cafee in Zenza where stoped on the way back who bought and ate an ice cream and a hot chocolate at the same time. I can say it is very tasty after such an adventure.

Even more tasty was the dinner back at the bed and breakfast. Echines de porc avec pruno and tagliatelle. Super this ‘restaurant’ they have!

The last day in Bavella we climbed a route of 230m, very beautiful. After the day before I was too tired and had to dissapoint Anthony by saying I had not enough energy to try ‘the back of the elephant’.

It’s high. And here, when having to climb a bit sideways, if falling I would swing in a bow, which is worse than just falling straight down, much more risk to hurt yourself on the mountain, well, here the wall is flat, so I couldn’t really break anything. Flat also means: nothing to hold on to. Very technical and interesting climbing!

One of the middle points were like this, you secure yourself on the point, and then you ’sit’ over the emptyness, 150m up on the cliff. Stunning views.

Happy ending of the 6 days climbing.

Porto

The vacation went on to a softer mode, and we went up the west cost of Corsica as real tourists. Anthony took thousands of wonderful photos. I’m longing to have a new house so I have more place to put them up on the walls.

Anthony showed me this nice beach where he spent lots of summers as kid, fishing under water with his dad. When putting the feet in the water we never thought it was possible to swim, but then after some minutes it got better and when finally in, it was really nice!

A small village with lots of flowers, mostly geranium/perlagoner and roses, and two churches, one grec and one french.

How life is nice!

After this crazy beautiful day we finally reached Porto, where we stayed in a small cottage on a camping.

Porto with it’s big beach of small round stones.

The next day we followed a small river and stayed several hours on the small beach just under one of the bridges built on the time where Corsica belonged to Genova.

The water was freezing, just melted snow…

But who can resist so clear water?

The bravest one of us.

In the afternoon we took a walk to ‘Cappo Rosso’, a tower also built by the people from Genova.

A silent and beautiful day.

The last day of the vacation we rented a small boat.

But it’s not because no license is need that it doesn’t go fast… 9 horsepowers.

We visited the small village where the closest road is a 2 hours walk away, and most communication to the outside world is done by boat.

We saw mountains in all kinds of shapes, and we also saw several eagels!

We went in a small cave where the water was crystal clear and looked at all the small ‘aquarium’ fishes.

In the afternoon we took the smallest and most turning road I’ve never seen, along the coast between Porto and Calvi, to stay there over the night and take the boat to Nice the morning after.

We found a field full of flowers.

I’m so much recommending to go to this crazy beautiful island, especially in May. It was my first time, but far from the last!

We went up quite early, 8 is early for being saturday, and went to to Chateaudouble, a climbing site in the Var, one hour by car. Just before the site we stopped in a small village to take coffe and croissant in the sun, feeling the village atmosphere. I had forgotten how nice this site is, first a small walk in the forest and then full south with view of forest and the village.

We started with a long route, devided in three. I’m not anymore scared to go in first so Anthony started, then I climbed up to him and went first in the second route, then Anthony climbed up to me and continued doing the third one in first. All three was in 5c and I found them easy and beautiful. We did 7 routs in total, I found all expect the last quite easy, Anthony says I improved a lot lately, makes me happy. I don’t notice it, I mean I don’t feel better, it just feels like the routs got easier. The last one we did was a very physic 6a+, I made it in first but I had to fight a lot, lots of bad words in swedish.

In the late afternoon I met up with Gwladys and Louic at the the ce room in amadeus and we practiced lindy. The goal was to test to teach with Gwladys, using Louic as betatester. Don’t remember if I wrote it already but I’m planning to start a ce club in Amadeus, teach lindy hop and organize to go together to different camps around in france. We decided the name of the group to ’swing&soul’ because we plan to not only dance to swing but also to more modern music, it will open up to interest more people. So yesterday it was Louic who taught us what parts of the basics that are hard. I only taught medium, advanced and acro classes before, never the pure beginners, it’s really a different methodology, but very interesting. We’re soo looking forward to teaching a group!

We made a long weekend of the already long easter-weekend, went upp to Anthonys parents in Lorraine (close to Forbach). Thursday morning we started with bying me a new car. My first new car, completely red, a Twingo, serie Rip Curl (means red details inside and some other small things). I cannot show you it on picture because it’ll be finished in july… I’m longing to have it. Specially since my old car decided to stop working the day before. It could have been just a strike, but since it’s not a french car we think it’s more serious. Happened when I was in antibes at lunch, when I wanted to go back to work it just didn’t start. Luckily I was parked on a free parking because the same evening we were going to the airport, so no chance to move it. We got it yesterday lunch with anthonys car and a rope, interesting trip from Antibes to Valbonne through roundabouts and all.

Then the rest of the vacation we ate, drank good wine, talked with the family and most of all, spent the time on the fields with fruit trees. The trees were abandoned for many years, some already dead. We started this work last time we were up, and this time we cut down four, planted six new and cleaned many others. I spent several hours on the lawn mower tractor cutting the grass, funny!

Choupie running with spring energy!
We managed to forget almost all the pictures on a usb stick in his parents house, I’ll try to add them later. Among the other pictures I have one showing how Choupie was spending most of the time while we were working with the trees.

It’s been a long time we wanted to cut this oak, which is stealing our evening sun, and this weekend we finally got it down. It took one complete day, lots of sweat and sore muscles, but it was well worth it, and no more sport needed this week.

The owner helped us by lending the chainsaw, and explaining how to make the trunk fall in the right direction. On the second picture you can see how that went… one of them ended up rigth on the fence…

It was lots of work to cut and move everything after.

These are my tulips that I planted in november, just coming out!

But I got 34 tagetes (oeillets d’inde).

Today I attended a small workshop in Acrobatics held by Olivier & Natasha. I was lucky that there was a girl who couldn’t come so I could borrow her guy. We learnt ‘over the back’ (armkastet) and ‘la hanche’ (höftkastet) (don’t know that one in english). Well, I knew them before, but since I love acro I couldn’t resist the chance to practice them again. They taught the techique of ‘over the back’ a bit differently to what I’m used to, more round, always interesting to try different approaches. I tried to take some pictures but none of them turned out very well.

I promised mum to show my new friend Gwladys, with whom I went with to Grenoble last weekend, with whom I’ll go on all lindy camps we can afford and with whom I’ll try to start up a small lindy club in Amadeus.

We’ve tried, for the second time a recipie of pastasallad from a small recipie book we have. This year we got around 20 avocadoes. We do all kinds of things with them, but this recepie I’ll share with you here is my favourite usage.

For 6 people:

• 500 g maccheroni or penne
• 3 chicken files (ca 400g)
• 6 to 9 slices of bacon
• 2 avocadoes
• the juice from 1/2 lemon
• 2 to 3 coffe spoons with red curry paste (not too strong)
• ca 1.5 dl fresh cut coriander
• olive oil
• salt and pepper (från kvarn)

How to:

Fry the chickens without fat, two to three minutes depending on their thickness. Salt and pepper and put the chickens aside. In the same frying pan, heat 2 soup spoons with olive oil and melt the curry paste inside, fry for 2 to 3 minutes. Let it cool down.

Fry the bacon, either in a frying pan or under the grill in the oven until they are a bit crispy, but not burnt. Cut the chicken and the bacon in centimeter big pieces.

Cut the avocadoes in cubes, put the lemon juice on them to avoid that they loose the color. Put avocadoes, 4 soup spoons olive oil, the coriander, the chicken and the bacon in a salad bowl.

Cook the pasta ‘al dente’. Put the pasta in the frying pan with the curry, mix it well. Then mix the pasta with the rest of the ingredients in the salad bowl. Let the mix rest for about half an hour to let the tastes go into the pasta. Taste to see if some spicies are missing. Decorate with a couple of leavs of coriander.

Done! Sorry if my translation french-english is not perfect. For example I don’t know if ‘curry paste’ is the right word… or coriander the right spelling.

Tell me if you tried it!

Tissel Kästel, also called Trassel, TasselTrassel or IQ 0, have today went to the cat heaven. We all miss her, especially her owner Joachim Kästel, and her food-givers and home-cleaners in Skogstorp, Susanne and Leif Kästel.

Tissel made her self known during her life as a very intelligent (hrm…) cat. To get attention she went up on a table or window frame and puffed with her nose on things standing there until they fell down making a “waking up sound” for the food-givers. Speculators say that she have got this big intelligence by the head massage she have gotten all these years by five times a day smashing the head into the glass of the terrarium where the lizards live.

 
On her throphy wall we can find all kinds of annimals: green madagaskar lizard, Tess beloved dessart rat, numerous hazel mouses, birds from the forest and fish from the aquarium.

Som tur är så känner jag mig inte så idag. Jag vaknade av ett skratt i en dröm, mådde bra, sen kom jag att tänka på igår och vart jag var, och då mådde jag fortfarande bra. Inte stressad, roliga projekt att fundera över, perfekt kärlek, bra helt enkelt.

Det som fick mig att fundera på den där upplevelsen var att jag drömde om dans. Det var en lustig dröm där jag dansade lindy/blues med folk från folkdansen, på Stefan och Annas bröllopsfest. Vi sa att vi skulle träffas och dansa så där varje fredag kväll. Jag dansade med Niklas och Urban. Sen kom det en dans då alla kavaljererna var upptagna, då gick jag för att leta efter min kamera, och såg på vägen Joachim som satt i en babyväska på urbans rygg. Han var kanske 3 år. Jättesöt med sitt röda, aningens lockiga hår. Urban dansade runt och när jag gick förbi gjorde han en shimmy på skoj. Jocke hängde inte riktigt med (en shimmy är ju rätt snabb, det är när man skakar axlar/bröst) och hans ansikte var så roligt när det skakade, svårt att beskriva i ord ett avslappnat ansikte som skakas snabbt så kinder och haka vobblar. Det såg så roligt ut att jag skrattade högt, och så vaknade jag.

Dans är mitt gamla liv. Det är som om jag slutat ett liv och börjat ett helt nytt. Efter min dansdröm trodde jag nog några sekunder att jag hade kvar mitt gamla, och sen kom minnena från att jag är i frankrike, med Anthony, har ett bra jobb och letar hus på fritiden. Ett bra liv, men mycket annorlunda.

På tal om hus och tomtletande så har vi fått en dålig nyhet från Anthonys föräldrar. Den summa som de tänkt hjälpa oss med är blockerad och kan inte tas ut nu på grund av krisen, har vi otur är den halverad i värde också. Det kan dröja två-tre år innan pengarna blir “upplåsta”. Typiskt, det är ju nu när hus och tomtpriser går ner som man ska köpa. Jag tror jag fått Anthony att förstå att jag inte är så sugen på att sätta mig i en liten lägenhet i fem år, utan att jag hellre satsar på hus nu, att bygga hus, så vår plan är (som de senaste två åren…) att vänta ett år och sen köpa en tomt. Förhoppningsvis vet vi mer om de blockerade pengarna om ett år, då kan vi köpa en tomt med de pengar vi har, sen vänta på de blockerade pengarna och utöka lånet för att bygga huset. Idag har jag tänkt jag ska göra en mer detaljerad budget av det scenariot.

Jag hade just bestämt mig för att själv börja ringa runt till mäklare och gå på visningar av hus och tomter. Även om vi inte planerar att köpa nu är det bra att vara insatt i marknaden, och ha sett mycket så man vet precis vad man vill ha, och när man ska slå till. Dessutom skulle det vara en nyttig övning för mig att ta kontakt och prata franska. Någon gång är det ju dags att lära mig säga “vous” istället för “tu” (franskans förfärligt krångliga ni-form).

Men, nu har anthony lagt ner min plan, han vill inte att vi går och tittar på potentiellt interessanta tomter, om de skulle finnas kvar sen när vi vill köpa, då har vi ju försummat chansen att gå direkt genom ägaren och slippa dyra mäklar-kostnader. Jag håller med. Typiskt. Min super-favorit-tomt är kvar och jag vill verkligen se den. Innan jul åkte jag runt i hela opio, säkert en och en halv timme på alla småvägar jag hittade för att leta rätt på tomten men inte en skymt av någon skylt eller gräsplätt som liknade fotona. Bästa lösningen är att skicka någon vän att kolla på tomten, på så sätt skriver de på mäklar-pappret om att de sett den, och sen kan de berätta vart den finns, ibland träffar man ju till och med ägaren när man besöker tomt med mäklare. Men, vänner är det inte så gott om, i alla fall inte som Anthony känner för att besvära med att besöka en tomt som både är för dyr och som vi inte planerar köpa för att det är för tidigt för oss. Men jag vill! Jag vill använda den som exempel när jag lär mig mer om hur det funkar att bygga hus. Igår köpte vi en bok, vi bestämde att jag ska koncentrera mig på att lära mig mer om husbyggarteknik, papper osv, istället för mäklar-kontakt. Det är också intressant och lärorikt. Än en gång är jag besviken på att jag inte har några egna vänner här nere. Hade Kat eller AnnCharlotte varit här så hade jag ju kunnat fråga dem att gå och besöka min lilla tomt.

Nu är det ett nytt år och jag tror det blir ett bra år. Anthonys nyårslöfte är att ta hand om sin hälsa. Han har några små problem, bland annat att synen “darrar”, som han ska ta tag i. Själv ska jag bli mer ansvarstagande och drivande i saker vi gör, jag började igår med att laga en supergod middag alldeles själv. Det blev helstekt kyckling i ugn med päron bitar, aprikoser och fikon karameliserade i honung och vitt vin, och som var i ugnen sista halvtimmen med kyckligen så den fick en god smak av dem, och sen couscous brevid. Vi var imponerade båda två.

As you know we (me and Anthony) wants to live in a house, and we have had plans to buy one or even build one. Now this is very expensive where we live. We have many questions unanswered, like, will we want to stay in this region, should we buy now or later, should we first buy a flat and then a house etc.

One and a half year ago we started to visit different lands, I showed some of them here in my blog. Then the market began to stabilize, and now finally it’s going down a little bit.

Some months ago, when we realized the market was beginning to go down we decided that we would try to buy a house or land one year from now. That way the prices have time to go down, and we have time to save a little bit more, and to be more sure we want to stay here.

Another affect of the crisis is that we are very happy to have stable jobs. We see how contractors are put out, Amadeus is firing lots of them, and how it gets harder to get jobs in general. It make us think that in our situation, with maybe a family in some years, it’s not the best time to quit jobs to find new, less stable ones, in another region, maybe in a smaller, more risky company. Even if the house prises would be lower, with one or both of us without jobs we would not get very far.

So, ok we’ll probably stay here.

Quiet some time ago, we applied/told we were interested in buying one of a set of new apartments built between where we live and where we work. The situation is perfect with 10 minutes bike in forest to work, forest all around, south position, a small but nice view on a small golf court. The appartments are built by Valbonne, and sold to a price lower than market to people working in sophia (which is part of Valbonne). We were told that priority were given to people with less income and we were too far back in the list to have a chance.

Yesterday they called Anthony telling that we had a chance to buy a three room, or even a four room appartment, available in september 2009. The tree room appartment is 75m2 and have a balcony of 25m2, price 310 000Eur. The four room for a bit over 400 000. Three rooms would be enough for us.

Anthony was from the beginning attracted by those appartments, the situation and the thought of for quiet cheep have something completely new where we could decide everything inside. And in contrast I have always been sceptic, now when I’ve tried the life on the country side with a garden, all is silent around, plus how nice we have it here with walking distance to Valbonne Village etc. I have a hard time seeing me live in a flat.

So, we did some calculation with three scenarios:

1) Bying flat now, then five years later a house (meaning either house, or land and constructing a house). (Another parenthesis here is that if you didn’t know, me and Anthony are very lucky people who will be able to put close to 200 000 in a loan, from savings and help of parents). We would first take a loan of 5 years for the flat (the one for 310 000), then buy a house for 500 000 (land 300 000, house 200 000), taking a loan of 10 years. So after 15 years of loan we would own a house of 500 000 and we would have payed 83 000 to the bank. Pas mal!

2) Bying a house now (land 240 000, house 200 000). Well, we would need a loan of 20 years and in the end we would have payed 170 000 to the bank. Note also that the house itself would be ‘only’ worth 440 000.

3) Staying here 5 years (to compare it to the first scenario, in reality it would rather be three years or until a baby made it too hard to stay here…). Say we would buy the same thing as in the first scenario, a house for 500 000. Then we would have ‘lost’ 101 000: 39 000 in rents the five years, and 62 000 for a ten year loan. 15 years in total to be free.

You see… we have a small problem. How to decide. Following my heart I would go for scenario number two. I want to build now, I don’t want to build a house when having a baby. And I DON’T want to spend 5 years of my life in a flat. I just don’t want. But is that worth 100 000 that we would loose? Don’t know.

Please help!

Day of return to Tana. Early in the morning we took a taxi, which was not a taxi but a family going to Diego in their old 4×4. Almost arrived in Diego the car broke down, the cooling liquid ran out on the ground under the car. We felt sorry for the guy and his family. Luckily for us there came a yellow taxi just after us and we could go with it to the airport.

Everything went fine. We managed (hm, no, Anthony managed) to negotiate the price of the taxi from the airport to Tana from 40 000 to 25 000, and on top we got the most modern car of all our stay on Mada.

The hotel had nice personel and the room, on the third and top floor was charming. They also had kittens which lay in my knee when eating breakfast = happy Tess.

In the evening we ate in a nice, quite cheap restaurant. It took about 10-15 minutes to walk there from our hotel. I was scared all the way. Compared to the place we stayed in at the arrival to Mada this area of Tana was really calm, on the way to the restaurant we didn’t see a single person, which is scary in another way than when surrounded by strange people.

Wednesday the 12 November

The big market day. And also last day on Madagascar, at least that’s what we thought… in fact, late in the evening Anthony ade the reflection that if our flight left at midday, there would be no change to get the flight Paris-Nice at ten in the evening which we had planned. So, we double checked the AF tickets and – indeed they were on Friday, not Thursday. What a miss! The hotel had internet so we verified the Corsair flights and saw that the one we had initially planned to take was Friday (there are no dates on the GP tickets). Suddenly we had one more day of vacation!

We spent all morning in the biggest market in Tana, just looking around, then ate lunch and planned to do all the shopping of souvenirs in the afternoon. The weather didn’t want to play our game but decided to rain so our shopping was quite hectic. When we bought vanilla we got surrounded by ten people, all trying to sell us their vanilla, showing us why this or that one would be better. We had the hands full and got a bit stressed. How to know what is good quality and not? We had read they should be long, dark, a little bit towards red but not brown. And not too dry. It took Anthony half an hour to negotiate the good vanilla and price.

The last evening, which was not the last evening, we had decided to eat in a more expensive restaurant. It had a décor in warm red colors and servers everywhere. The first menu we got was only for aperitifs We ordered a drink each. After finishing the drink we both wanted more, and since it was the last evening… hm, anyways, we bought another one. When I had trunk one third of my new cocktail I was starting to get drunk. The food arrived but I couldn’t eat. Anthony told me after I had gone all white in the face. I had probably not drunk enough water during the day. Then I was happy we had one more evening so that our vacation didn’t end with a failed restaurant visit.

Thursday the 13 November

What would we do with this extra day? In fact I didn’t managed to buy all the day before, being so stressed by the rain and the sellers. We decided to visit another market. The sun was with us and we found lots of funny things. The market itself was an attraction, there were everything to be found, from furniture, to hats and jewelry, to animals, dead or alive.

In the afternoon we made a walk in Tana that the guide book had recommended. It went up on the highest hill, to the palace of the queen. From there we had a great view in all directions. We took a guide who explained us a bit of the history of the kings and queens. The palace itself what not a lot to see, it burnt down ten years ago and now they tried to rebuild it. The history were starting 700 years earlier, we saw drawings of kings with palaces more like huts, very different from our own history.

In the afternoon there was a thunder storm, it was the beginning of the rain season. And in the evening we returned to our very first restaurant. The musicians were there again. We were the only guests this night and the owner took well care of us. We ordered gabons and got four mega shrimps each. It was a memorable evening, and a good ending of our vacation.